Bush may be many (evil)things, but he's no inbred hick, but a blue-blooded, Skull-And-Bones Yale legacy, descended from a top spook and a Nazi-collaborating Yankee aristocrat. To state otherwise is terribly offensive to inbred hicks!

Hmm, guess I ran afoul of the 'no mentioning candidate' policy, I'll condense to say there is a large coalition of intellectually honest, pro-liberty, pro-free enterprise people on what is traditionally called the 'right' that find the corporate state abhorrent. Those folks typically have a minarchist or market anarchist bent, usually follow Austrian-school notions of free markets, full property rights, and sound money. To dismiss these folks is short-sighted to say the least.

NOEN, come on, that kind of broad-brush statement does no good at all. There's a coalition of Old Right,libertarian, MOR and soft liberals that support Ron Paul for instance. Many of these people embrace the Austrian school economics of von Mises, Rothbard, and to a lesser extent Hayek, rejecting the current corporatist system of collusion between politicians and special interests outright. They believe that true political and economic liberty are intimately entwined, and that the only solution to the more-or-less continual crises of the corporate state is a restoration of sacred property rights in one's person and posessions, and an elimination of government subsidization of special interests. If this isn't intellectual honesty, then it doesn't exist.

Doug is right on, and Sepptb is begging the question - if marriage is (as is proper) a private matter of free association and freedom of contract, then government has no role, none - not in any capacity relating two the adults involved. A society that had free association, freedom of contract, and full property rights would recognize any state-sanctioned union for the slavery to the state that it is, and would quickly shift to private marriage administered through spiritual or other communities. I hasten to add that several unfortunate young men in my former employ have gotten their testicles caught up in the gears of the state (family court) without benefit of marriage at all. The moral argument for any kind of state-recognized union is null on its face, the moral arguments against it plain and righteous, unless you are a statist.

Gerrymandering is one of the most storied,time-honored ways of screwing the people out of effective political representation while greatly benefitting the politicians and parties who so deprive them.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association (www.aiha.org), of which I am a couldn't be prouder member, has weighed in on this on their website, and has sent an official letter to Mayor Bloomie and the city council in opposition to the ordinance. I blogged this here; http://www.libertyguys.org/home/detail.asp?ArtID=1686

@ Kevin;

"The silliest part is something that Patrick Smith didn't mention: if a pilot wants to endanger a flight, he's got much easier and more certain ways to do it than to smuggle weapons aboard".

Not that you are wrong, but Patrick Smith would very quickly discover himself ass-and-collared out of his pilot gig is he were even to breathe such an opinion, which is the meat of exactly how f-ed up the whole thing is. Instead of being advised and empowered by intelligent adults with a vested interest in successful security, we are instead being being pushed around by a bunch of fantasy-ridden, puerile, paranoid children, for the purpose of aggrandizing the state. The whole thing is complete, nonsensical, uneconomic, top-down centralized madness, and the sooner we realize it the sooner we will be on the path to restoring both our natural rights and security sanity.

The entire Kabuki 'security' charade at airports is nothing but a means to show every single member of the petit bourgoisie who is boss (HINT: It Isn't You). There is absolutely zero merit to these procedures otherwise. The TSA charade cannot stop something like 80% of the obvious bomb components deliberately smuggle through to test their efficacy, so what other use is it. When you get right down to it, TSA security screening is just one more tool of oppression.

@ (whoever said there is no going back to gold);

Jim F**king CRAMER just had Ron on, and while dancing around the issue agreed with Ron on the disastrous path the fed has put our dollar and our economy on, that a dollar collapse is possible, and what then? There are worse things than commodity money, and we may be about to find out exactly what those things are.

Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word ... All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy." -- Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, 1981, pp. 103-105.

@ Nick;

"You believe that government is essentially a form of coercion, and that a scaling up of government is simply a scaling up of the abuses of power. Do I have that right?"

How is that even a valid question? The very concept of a centralized, coercively-tax-funded government is one of force. A government is simply an organization that claims a monopoly on force over a given geographic area, this is not even open to quwestion or debate, so let's get that over with now.

The only relevant argument is whether a government (force) or free individuals are the right or moral vehicle for a given action. If you argue that government HAS to do certain things "because they won't get done", you place your subjective preferences over the preferences of others.

More seriously, you declare your right to negate the rights of others by comandeering their property or their labor for your preferred outcome. This is an argument from utility and is unacceptable, because it violates self-ownership, property ownership, and the non-aggression principle.

"To me, free market forces unchecked prevent the operation of democracy. You apparently disagree. Fair enough."

We have had 6 years to observe the increasingly naked results of such unfettered "democracy". Do you see where that has got us? TRUE, moral democracy is self-government.

The VITRIOL expended here, and elsewhere on Congressman Paul is UNREAL. All of the digits expended by all of the left and right on all of the candidates doesn't add up to the venom spewed out here on this thread against a gentle, self-effacing man who wants nothing more than a free, peaceful, propsperous republic that cultivates peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. The positions many above single out for such poisonous invective (against abortion, pro free-market, pro liberty, anti-war), are the same as up to 80% of the candidates running, on paper, so why are a tiny minority so ANGRY at Paul? Is it because he has integrity, and he means what he says? Because he grounds his positions in the constitution and sound (Austrian) economics? That he wants to end America's evil wasteful empire abroad and adress the collapsing dollar, the welfare / warfare state, and rescue the people from the coming Social Security / Medicare meltdown?

Don't make up your mind based on what other commentators SAY he will do, go to his website, to his posts on LewRockwell.com, to YouTube videos of his debate appearances and interviews, and to his congressional record (and please READ the TEXT of the bills some criticise. He has voted for and introduced a few bills here and there that belie his constitutional position, he has pandered now and again to pro-life audiences (a requirement for Republican audiences), but the man's public record largely speaks for itself. You don't have to vote for him, you don't even have to like him, but you can't fail to understand that he is running for president, not because he wants to run the government or run your life, but to simply restore liberty-everyone's liberty - from the depredations of a federal government that has burst its constitutional chains and run completely amok over our freedom.

Contemplate that while Harry Reid introduces a bill to absolve the big telecoms from violating all of our rights to privacy, while the president of Quest Communications is under indictment (on dubious charges) in retaliation for his refusal to go along with it, while the drug war incarcerates millions of blacks and hispanics for peaceful behavior and turns the cities into war zones, while thousands of foreign nationals are imprisoned and tortured in our name in godforsaken hellholes around the world, while our soldiers and many, many Afghan and Iraqi civilians continue to die needlessly. We need a Misesian president now.

ZUZU - thanks for your posts. You were far more patient and articulate than I would have been!

I meant to post in support of both Johnny's and Ron's performance, and Jay's gracious, fair interview. The crap others have posted about Ron above is shameful, discredited smear, and I would think it below the fine people who read boingboing, but I guess the smearbund is working overtime, big surprise to see the man's record so carelessly misrepresented and his mistakes made to hang upon him.

His platform is simple; To end the war, end the empire, and save our cherished liberties and the economy, the federal government needs to be re-restrained by the Constitution, and as much power as possible devolved to the states and ESPECIALLY to the people. It's called de-cent-ral-i-za-tion, exactly like the underlying premise of the in-ter-net, which is why Ron is so pop-u-lar there, Goo-gle it.

As far as his personal opposition to abortion goes, he is an ob-gyn, he comes by it honestly, you can research it. What it means for his policy is that abortion is a matter that is to be handled at the state level, exactly as the involuntary killing of a fetus is.

The Federal government is already quite busy destroying any remaining abortion rights attributed by Roe, getting the issue out of the hands of the federal judiciary is the only way any rights that pertain can be saved.

To those who believe this would result in abortion being outlawed, maybe you have never talked to voters in NY, NJ, MA, CA, OR, WA, or any other 'blue' state - in those states it simply isn't going to happen, period, and if, say Utah outlaws it, it's the duty of the people of that state to make sure it's done in a way that doesn't destroy the rights of the woman (I'm not sure that's possible but they should be allowed to try).

Goddamn it, I didn't mean to go off on that tangent. Screw you haters, the Sex Pistols rocked, you all miss the POINT of punk, and we need Johnny Rotten even more now than we did in 1977. And he gave MAD props to Dr. Paul, apparently he's been active in small-l libertarian circles for some time, the natural home for an anarchist, BTW.

@ Ill Lich;

"Well DUH! That's what happens in capitalism: "boom and bust."

NOOOO, that's what happens when a government and a central bank conspire to counterfeit a currency. See the wikipedia entry for "Austrian Business Cycle Theory" or Ludwig von Mises. Then research the only candidate for president who is not only talking about the existential threat a dollar collapse poses, but who actually has a plan to stop it - Ron Paul.

Have any of you ever heard Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" on XM on Friday evenings? Articulate, erudite, with a masterful command of American musical culture, he's / it's a joy to listen to, one wonders if the press was having its leg pulled for all those years.